THE Land Bank of the Philip­pines (LBP) has tapped the Pro­vin­cial Ve­teri­nary Of­fice (PVO) of Ne­gros Oc­ci­den­tal for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a fi­nanc­ing pro­gram seen to boost back­yard an­i­mal rais­ers in the prov­ince.

Pro­vin­cial Vet­eri­nar­ian Renante De­cena, who met with of­fi­cials of Lbp­ba­colod at his of­fice in Ba­colod City on Mon­day, said the ini­tia­tive is ac­tu­ally un­der the Agri­cul­tural Com­pet­i­tive­ness En­hance­ment Fund (ACEF) lend­ing pro­gram of the De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture (DA) coursed through the bank agency.

De­cena said it was ini­tially in­tended for com­mer­cial farm­ing but even­tu­ally ex­panded to small scale rice and other crop pro­duc­tion in­clud­ing live­stock due to some prob­lems.

“The PVO is the bank’s part­ner specif­i­cally in the eval­u­a­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gram in the prov­ince,” he said, adding that the eval­u­a­tion which will start this week fo­cuses on the ca­pa­bil­ity of the rais­ers to “pro­duce” as well as pay loan.

Un­der the pro­gram, the LBP will pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to qual­i­fied rais­ers sub­ject to a cer­tain in­ter­est rate. For crops, the agency will also part­ner with the Of­fice of the Pro­vin­cial Agri­cul­tur­ist (OPA).

The DA, in its web­site, said ACEF lend­ing pro­gram aims to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­ity of farm­ers and fish­er­folk by pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary credit to them and their the ac­quired co­op­er­a­tives and as­so­ci­a­tions, and mi­cro and small-scale en­ter­prises (MSES), for the ac­qui­si­tion and es­tab­lish­ment of pro­duc­tion, post-har­vest, and pro­cess­ing ma­chiner­ies, equip­ment and fa­cil­i­ties, and farm in­puts , among oth­ers.

A max­i­mum of P5 mil­lion can be availed by farmer and fish­er­folk co­op­er­a­tives, as­so­ci­a­tions, and MSES and P1 mil­lion by in­di­vid­ual farmer and fisher.

The LBP shall man­age the credit fa­cil­ity funded and shall de­ter­mine the el­i­gi­bil­ity re­quire­ments and set the re­quired loan se­cu­rity or col­lat­eral and rea­son­able in­ter­est for the loan, it added.

PVO, for its part, is push­ing for the pro­vi­sion of fi­nanc­ing sup­port es­pe­cially to an­i­mal rais­ers with pro­duc­tion gaps like those of lay­ers and goat in the south­ern por­tion of Ne­gros Oc­ci­den­tal.

De­cena said lack of fi­nances is one of the rea­sons why some rais­ers were not able to sus­tain their pro­duc­tion. The LBP is amenable to such pro­posal, he added.

Rec­og­niz­ing the fact that not all ser­vices can be pro­vided alone by the pro­vin­cial govern­ment, De­cena said it is good that there are other govern­ment agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions with pro­grams aligned with that of the prov­ince.

“Aside from the pro­duc­tion as­pect, fi­nanc­ing would also help rais­ers in terms of mar­ket­ing,” the pro­vin­cial vet­eri­nar­ian said, adding that most of the rais­ers as­sisted by PVO are also LBP clients.*